Why would I want everyone in the entire corporation to know everything about me? It's just like when my company invited everyone to "like" them on FB a few years ago. Yeah, right, so they can keep tabs on everything I do outside of work. Outside of payroll, or my boss, all anyone needs to know about me at work is my name, my title, and perhaps a photograph.

I am skeptical of claims that people suffer from "digital readiness". I guarantee you they are perfectly capable of using the internet when it comes to porn. It's not like it requires years of schooling. Once someone has access to the internet there is no excuse for not becoming "digitally literate", other than a lack of motivation.

You are not odd.

Good point. I don't so much want something that will regulate my water. Watering is not a problem. But show me something that will pull weeds and tie up tomatoes, and I'm all in.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. :-)

I agree we're at a turning. I'm not sure I'm convinced that democracy necessarily has to follow oligarchy, but that would be the best possibility. The bad thing is that there will be a period of instability in between, and that is worrisome.

That's along the lines of just what I was thinking. I feel like Hari Seldon in Asimov's Foundation series. You can see little signs that things are falling apart all over the place. For instance, I was in Lowes yesterday and I noticed they now sell booklets on how to raise chickens and goats. Apparently there are so many suburbanites doing this that they rate their own book sections. Last month I set a recliner and couch out at the curb for the monthly bulk-trash pickup. I left home for a few hours, and when I returned, I discovered two guys with an old pickup parked in front of my house tearing into the furniture to get the metal out of it (the springs, recliner base, etc). They didn't want the furniture, they just wanted the metal. They promised me they would not leave a mess, and they were good on their promise. They worked pretty hard to get the metal out, and I tried to imagine any situation whereby the metal would be worth more than earning wages at a minimum wage job. But then, there probably aren't as many minimum wage jobs to go around as I was thinking. I drive around at night and I see a lot of streetlamps out, and business signs that are only partially lit. Little signs of decay everywhere. And I live in a state that is "booming" with (supposedly) only 4% unemployment.

I don't know why anyone would want to hop in a car with someone of dubious character, who may or may not have proper insurance, who may or may not have a proper driver's licence, who might be driving a jalopy in any sort of condition, but hey, people hitchhike all the time so to each his own.

Meanwhile, Uber will do fine until the first woman gets raped by an Uber driver, or until the first few Uber drivers get robbed or killed.

This is not a surprise. Detroit makes it's money from marketing cars that are: a)"fun to drive" b)"tough" c)"stylish" d)"pretentious or class-conscious" e)some combination of the above. Safety, functionality, and reliability are boring (didn't Lee Iacocca once say, "safety doesn't sell"?).

This is unfortunate, because I think Detroit is missing out on a great opportunity. Somebody, somewhere is going to start making autonomous cars, and people will start buying them. Detroit will find itself playing catch-up, or get relegated to irrelevancy.

Personally, I think if autonomous cars can be proven to be safe and reliable, there will be a virtual tsunami of adoption by the buying public.

The only reason Google is doing this is they're about to get hammered for having a nearly all-male workforce. Truly, Google could care less whether this program actually accomplishes anything or whether more women get into coding. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, they can always say they've poured a few million dollars into the effort and they tried.

Frankly, I could care less whether the program works or not, or even the fact that it is aimed squarely at women. This is because a lot of coders out there today have no clue how computers work, and barely understand what they're doing. The whole idea that all we need to do is encourage people to code and we'll magically get more coders is ludicrous. Steinway could start a program to get more kids interested in playing the piano, and the result would be a million kids who could play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", and little else, and perhaps a handful of Harry Connick Jrs. Like surgery, or music, or higher math, or prose, it takes a certain amount of talent to be really good at programming, and there are only so many people who have that talent.

For a few million dollars Google has bought themselves a lot of good will, and probably staved off a lawsuit or two, without changing much of anything.

"Passing" the Turing Test is about as valid as Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

Dear God! I can't get in my preorder for the Lego movie? Oh, the humanities!

The fact that this is a problem says a lot more about our society than it does about either Amazon or Warner Brothers.

Oh boy. Did I screw up. I meant to say, "I am not in favor of net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am in favor of net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued." Good grief. Commence egg throwing, fellow slashdotters.

I had the privilege of seeing the late, great Admiral Grace Hopper speak back in the early 80's. Something she said at that talk always stuck with me. In those days we began talking about "information science" (in fact my degree is in Computer and Information Science). She emphasized the importance of attaching value to information. "For example," she said. "Imagine there are two pieces of information headed to the computer's operating system. One piece of information says that a valve in the plant is over-pressure and may rupture at any minute, causing great damage and possible loss of life. The other piece of information says that Joe Blow did not get the proper insurance deduction taken out of his paycheck last week. Clearly one piece of information has more value than another, and so one piece of information should be processed first."

Cisco does have a point. It can be argued that certain bits of information are more valueable or important than others. The problem is not that we should weight bits, but how we're going about doing it. If the only criteria for assigning value is based on the bit generator's ability to pay, then we will build a very unfair and dangerous system. I am not against net neutrality because because I think all bits are created equal. I am against net neutrality because of how bits will end up being valued. Cisco says that video bits are more important than email bits. I agree with that. But if Cisco says that Netflix bits are more important than, say, Hulu bits, I will not agree with that.

It is not surprising that Cisco would make such a statement, regardless of how any of us feel about how bits are valued. They stand to make a lot of money designing and selling systems that weight and prioritize bits.

Anyone who scratches their heads at the lack of free wifi in airports is obviously too young to remember pay toilets. Talk about a captive audience. But airports eventually moved away from those. Hopefully pay-wifi will disappear too.